NOT GETTING IT

Curious item in the newspaper today. In Minnesota of all places, there's been a wave of immigrants from African nations and the Middle East. That's not the news. These immigrants are more and more turning to publicly funded but privately run charter schools to educate their kids. That's not the news either. The news is the reason why these immigrants are sending their children to charter schools, and that is to shield them from American culture. Yep, the culture they sought out, the one that accepted them no matter what their origins and the one paying for the education of their children and granting them all the rights and blessings this nation offers. These parents just don't get it. They want to take their kids to Disney Land but not let them go on any of the cool rides. No Space Mountain, no Matterhorn and no Indian Jones Adventure. Might as well be in Canada.

These parents are not alone in not getting it. Here in New York City many Orthodox Jewish communities send their children to religious schools with a completely substandard curriculum, with some of these schools not even teaching the English language! Quite often history is not taught until late in high school and then only a rudimentary hit-the-high-spots review. Many of the schools for girls are housewife-training academies with little or no academic training. Unlike the vast majority other American Jewish families, who revere education and give their children every opportunity to succeed in American life, a lot of the Orthodox (by no means all of them) see no reason for teaching their children what the law says every child should know. Like the like-minded immigrants in Minnesota, they figure they will shield their children from the culture of their own nation.

In Minnesota, at least, the children learn what every other American child learns and will likely emerge from their grammar and high schools well prepared to enter any American college or University where they can gain a degree along with the skills to compete in the job market. The Hasidic community, on the other hand, produces a lot of young men and women ignorant of their native language, culture, customs and history. They are native-born Americans unable to write a coherent sentence in English and who have no idea who is Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman, John Adams, Frederick Douglas, James Fenimore Cooper, Robert Frost, George Patton, Louis Brandeis, Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Amelia Earhart, Jacob Javits, Jesse James, Geronimo, Kit Carson, Daniel Boone, Lewis or Clark, Robert E. Lee, Al Capone, Fiorello LaGuardia, Ava Gardner, Jackie Robinson or just about any famous American in history good, bad or indifferent.

The fact that a generation of unemployable young adults is coming of age in many Orthodox communities is strange, especially considering that they were all intensely educated from a young age, just not in anything particularly useful or marketable. There are only so many rabbis a community needs and when those jobs are full, well, then what? Food stamps, welfare and marginal employment beckon, and for no good reason at all. There are all sorts of very religious people in this country, and a whole lot of very religious Jews who are superbly educated and well adapted to their native land. Why would these intelligent and kind Hasidic people sabotage their own children? Talk about not getting it...

When it comes to religion and assimilation in America, you absolutely can have it both ways. There's a ton of religious people in America who somehow absorb and survive our culture and heritage and obey the dictates of their faith. The Minnesota African immigrants don't seem all that religiously motivated, though, more like a control issue, trying to preserve the culture of their homeland and carefully monitor the extent of their children's assimilation, something they admit is inevitable. There's a lot to be said for preserving one's native customs and traditions and a lot of Americans seem intent on doing just that, whether through the food they enjoy, the language they speak at home, the kind of weddings they celebrate, or even the reenactment of Civil War battles, of all things. The bottom line is that most people in America in one way or another are profoundly connected to the American experience.

Most of us find that American culture is just fine, a good thing and a positive experience throughout our lifetimes. Not perfect, but better at getting things right than any other culture on earth ever has. Things like human rights, individual liberty, equality under the law and a good chance to flourish and succeed without giving up your personal identity. Your political and religious beliefs are not subject to official approval, nor is the way you raise your children as long as you are not harming or neglecting them. Sometimes being an American is watching your children do as they please with their lives.

To many of us that is an important goal of raising our children; to educate them well and prepare them for life, a life of their own choosing. If they choose one like ours, fine. If not, that's okay too, it's their life. We have our own lives and hopefully live them well and show a good example to our youngsters. Usually they stick with the religion in which they were raised, but sometimes they don't. Whatever they decide, they almost always retain the core values taught to them as children and remain close to their families. Rarely is religion an issue that tears American families apart, except perhaps in the case of extreme religions, either leaving one or joining one.

If a child stays with his or her parents' faith only out of fear of ostracism from family and community, how strong is that faith? And when a religious conversion to a different faith dictates that one must not associate with one's own family and friends, doesn't that say a lot about that religion, that the only hold they have over the faithful is to isolate them from reality? How much does religion become something other than faith when it becomes an instrument of cultural apartheid? Aren't all religions based on love, tolerance, respect and human dignity, at least on paper? Is faith not enough? Is living a decent life insufficient? Some people believe just that and enforce their own will, claiming it to be God's will, no matter what damage their ideas inflict on others, even the ones they love the most.

That's one thing a lot us don't get, but this is America, and we don't have to get it, nor do they. If some people decide they know exactly what's on God's mind, well, there's nothing to do but be tolerant of them. There's no obligation to take them at all seriously, of course, but broad tolerance is the American way and has served us well. It's just too bad that children have to suffer the consequences. Eventually they grow up, whether or not they are prepared to live and flourish in their own country, a country ready and eager to give them a shot at contributing something special they hold within them, that special something that a solid education is most likely to bring out in each person.